Trending In Education

Mike Palmer is rejoined by Nancy, our virtual cohost, in a conversation about the new images released from the James Webb Space Telescope. We commend NASA for its lyric prose that accompanies the images of cosmic cliffs and young hot stars being born. Then we talk about Elon Musk. It's pretty much unavoidable to do so nowadays. We focus on recent news of an explosion during a Space X booster rocket test before shifting to our frustration about all the wasted energy and effort surrounding Musk's bid to acquire Twitter.

Then we shift gears to explore a Michele Zanini article about the org structure at CERN where they continue to develop and refine the Large Hadron Collider before concluding with notes of concern about toxic alpha leaders and top-down org structure while encouraging the courage and critical thinking that can keep Groupthink and it's risky shifts in check.

It's a thought-provoking exploration of some inspirational breakthroughs in science that you won't want to miss.

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And be sure to check out our new Substack Newsletter where you can hear about all the latest and greatest from your friends at Palmer Media. Visit us at TrendinginEd.com for more.

Marjorie Cass is the Founder and CEO of ALEE, an EdTech Startup that provides educators with tools and resources to teach literacy using whole books featuring classic works of literature. She joins host Mike Palmer in a conversation about her journey beginning as an educator, rising through the ranks as a literacy coach and administrator before deciding to go to business school at MIT where ALEE began to germinate.

From there, we learn what it's been like launching eight months ago while expanding on the significance and complexity of our growing literacy challenge in the US education system. Marjorie explains how she is designing ALEE to provide teachers with what they need to provide scaffolding and support to the essential relationship between a teacher, a student, and a great book.

We touch on the challenges of teaching in difficult times and the fear teachers are experiencing when dealing with important but difficult works of literature to teach reading these days. We explore how best to use technology to power the solution without losing sight of the central role of the teacher in the literacy equation. Marjorie shares the higher-level skills and thinking associated with the whole book as opposed to excerpts or synthetic passages that are increasingly used in literacy education.

It's a thought-provoking exploration of entrepreneurship, literacy, and the power of teaching through great books. Don't miss it!

Subscribe to Trending in Education wherever you get your podcasts. Visit us at TrendinginEd.com for more.

Arjun Moorthy is the Co-Founder and CEO of The Factual, a subscription-based, ad-free news app that aggregates and curates the news based on its credibility. He joins host Mike Palmer to talk about the importance of media literacy and critical thinking in a world with increasing partisanship and misinformation.

We hear Arjun's origin story which began as a paperboy in Canada before being educated as an engineer, working at Hubspot in its startup phase, and ultimately founding The Factual with Ajoy Sojan in 2016. We hear how he and team have navigated the years since launch and how the app has evolved over time. We learn how The Factual assesses the credibility of articles collected from over 2000 different news sites, giving each a rating between 1-100 to help the reader understand the quality of the information.

Arjun shares his perspectives on the challenges we face with the filter bubbles we experience today, especially through social media and how he and team are making design choices to address them. He also shares his thoughts on how this all relates to learning and educational discourse in a thought-provoking conversation you don't want to miss.

Subscribe to Trending in Education wherever you get your podcasts. Visit us at TrendinginEd.com for more insightful takes on what's new and emerging in learning and beyond.

Jane Oates is the President of Working Nation, a non-profit media entity focused on showcasing innovative approaches to career pathways that bridge from education into meaningful work. Jane joins host Mike Palmer in a conversation about the skills revolution and its connections to higher ed, the workforce, and new, emerging models for career development.

We begin by hearing Jane's origin story, beginning as a special ed teacher before moving into educational research at Temple University. From there, she joined Senator Edward Kennedy to help write legislation, worked in John Corzine's administration in New Jersey, and served as the Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Obama, in an impressive career culminating in her current role leading Working Nation.

Then we explore recent trends in workforce education, post-secondary pathways, and the critical connection between learning and the future of work. Jane shares her perspectives on what's emerging in the world of skills-based education, income share agreements, and other new models for educational pathways and provides advice to all of us charting our career trajectories in disruptive times.

It's an informed deep-dive into the world of workforce development and training with a genuine thought leader in the field. Don't miss it!

Subscribe to Trending in Education wherever you get your podcasts. Visit us at TrendinginEd.com for more.

Mike is joined by Zachary Davis, the President and Founder of Lyceum, an educational podcasting platform that is launching now. Zachary is also the organizer of the Sound Education conference and the host of the podcast Ministry of Ideas. He's also the host of a new podcast called Writ Large that is debuting now with the launch of Lyceum.. Zachary tells the story of how he became focused on educational audio after working at HarvardX, one of the early MOOCs associated with EdX. Despite doing great work there, he was frustrated by the low completion rate of the early MOOCs and eventually gravitated to podcasting as a way to make amazing educational content more broadly accessible to a global audience. This has led to the recent launch of Lyceum which is a curated educational audio platform with community features that allow for deeper engagement with folks who listen to educational podcasts.

We explore why audio is such an emotionally powerful and affordable format and how in many ways it is a rising trend that is more flexibly available than video and more intimate and emotionally resonant than the written word We also explore some of the ideas discussed in Writ Large which dives into the impact that key books have had on the world around them after the ink has dried. Finally, we conclude with Zachary's thoughts about how the broader trends towards audio may signal the dawn of a new audio age in which longer form lectures and conversations may begin to supplant print formats in the future.

It's a fascinating conversation and we hope you enjoy listening.